Interactive Fiction

Porpentine is a video game designer and writer, better known as a developer of hypertext games made with Twine. In her website, she describes herself as “a fem organism in oakland who makes everything“. In this article I am going to briefly describe four of the works that comprise “Eczema Angel Orifice“, a compilation of twenty five of her works

Porpentine is one of the most interesting and intensely innovative hypertext fiction writers there are. Imagine the surreal nightmarish worlds of David Lynch, the strange cities of Italo Calvino, the bleakness of Samuel Beckett in a work of interactive fiction. And after all that name-throwing and reference-juggling you won’t be even close to really describe what Porpentine is and does.

You would be leaving out the themes and the emotional landscape of Porpentine’s work. The fear of being alone. The ritualistic nature of work. The inherent violence of the cities. There is something very dark, very bleak in her works, but sometimes, in the middle of that, you can find real beauty, real hope, and a real hunger for life.

And after all this introduction, I still feel I haven’t said anything about her works that could give you an idea of what you can expect from them. They are not for everyone, nor for every mood. But if they are experienced at the right moment and with the right set of mind, they reveal themselves as one of the most powerful and beautiful experiences you can get from interactive fiction.

Just give them a go. Trust me, they are really worth it.

With nothing else to add, I will start with the games themselves.

Begscape

Begscape is a very simple game. You are a wanderer, going from one strange city to another. The names and descriptions are randomized, but they are all strangely evocative (“Mursdi is a citadel of ebony bricks and crimson thatch. There are many smokehouses and gambling parlors.“) hinting at a deeper story.

What do you do in those cities? Beg. Just beg, for food and shelter. If you don’t manage to get enough money to survive, you get more and more ill until you die. You can try your luck at another city, but eventually the ending is always the same. You try to survive, you don’t get enough money, you die.

It’s just a short poem, simple but sharp. The contrast between a strange, fantastic world, and the futility of your existence. So many things to discover, but so little things to do when you are powerless, and always death at the end of the way.

With Those We Love Alive

You are at the service of a monstrous Empress in a strange world, where everything that happens is dark and disturbing, but everyone (even the protagonist) is used to it. In this game, you are tasked with crafting weapons and symbols for the empress, but you can also spend your time exploring the palace and the city beyond.

Eventually, you discover there’s no use to it. The people in the city are broken and defeated. You explore the canal, the palace gardens, the mysterious temples and streets. Yet, soon there is no more to see, and you finally begin to repeat the same routine time after time, waiting for something to happen.

And it happens. At some points, the world reveals its cruelest and most violent nature. At other points, you find hope. Hope of being loved, hope of becoming what you want to be.

It is a powerful experience (though not exactly a game by any means). And it is the only interactive fiction I know that entices us to write on our skin at several points.

Ultra Business Tycoon III

This would be the closest thing to a game I’ve played from Porpentine. Become a corporate executive in a nightmarish world born from a nightmare of Samuel Beckett and the simulation games from the 80s. The aesthetic of this work tries to hint at those ugly old 8-bit simulators, with their bright colors and their shareware codes.

There are puzzles in here, and some of them are very good (my personal favourite is the one related to the difficulty setting). But the best of it is the description of the world, a satire of capitalism and cyberpunk sci-fi. Ugly and gruesomly exaggerated. Our objective in the game is to win one million dollars, in order to pass “The Mammon Gates”, a place “where glory, fame and power awaits”.

And yet there is another story, gradually hinted at, through several passages in italics. Another character, a boy who spends his time playing this computer game in order to forget about the mess that his own life has become. By the time we reach the end, that secondary story becomes the most important one; the story of Porpentine herself.

The last passage in this game is a beautiful and powerful message.

Skulljhabit

This game repeats one of Porpentine’s main themes: Work and routine. Life as an exercise of futility.

We have been assigned by a mysterious company a position in Skull Village. Our work? To shovel skulls endlessly in a place called “the skull pit”. It is a pointless work, but as Porpentine says, “all work is ultimately pointless under capitalism: self-perpetuating and ritualistic“.

There are other things we can do, of course. We can find out more about the local lore of the village. We can visit the mountain and the caves, and discover hidden and mysterious places.

But at the end? “No matter how entracing the world around you is, no matter what secrets it hints at, you must go wherever they tell you, uprooted from your personal goals“. You end up being “promoted” to have another boring job in another city. You end up repeating time after time the same routine, the same mantra. All those strange places, those stories only hinted at, will never be fully revealed.

“Asuria Awakens” is the last offering in the Gamebook Adventure series by Tin Man Games. Written by the well known gamebook blogger Stuart Lloyd and beautifully illustrated by Tony Hough, it tells the story of an investigator from Orlandes city hired by the Grand Duke to investigate the whereabouts of an emissary in the remote Orlandrian coastal town of Casporur.

I have read a lot of Stuart’s articles in his blog, and I respect a lot his opinions as a blogger. But, since I played the first entries in his “Legend of the Wayfarer” series, I must confess that I didn’t like him as much as a fiction writer. It probably wasn’t the best place to start reading Stuart’s work; after all, “Legend of the Wayfarer” is conciously designed as a “beer-and-pretzels” kind of gamebook (if such a thing can exist), with very little in the way of background story or character development.

“Asuria Awakens”, on the contrary, oozes background story. What starts as a simple investigation, gets more sinister the more we delve in. We discover Casporur, a city that hides awful and dark secrets, where people are scared and superstitious, awaiting – and fearing at the same time – the return of a lost god called Asuria. We finally discover the true nature of that “awakening of Asuria”, and the story turns into a mix of lovecraftian horror and “invasion of the body snatchers”. I don’t want to say much more about the story to avoid spoiling it, but I can only say that I am truly impressed. After reading this gamebook, I have a much higher opinion of Stuart Lloyd as a writer, and I will certanly read his other gamebooks with much more attention.

Structurally, this gamebook has some other interesting things to it. I liked the way in which Stuart mixes the traditional “convergent” structure with a “free roaming” structure in several places, like the castle or the streets in Casporur. Also, the length of this gamebook is quite impressive as well; I felt it could easily be twice the size of any other Gamebook Adventure I’ve played.

“Asuria Awakens” is not without its problems, though. I feel that the very particular kind of humor of this author (refreshing in many places) felt out of place at some points, when the story was getting darker and more sinister. Also, the ending section of the gamebook, when the “ultimate evil” was destroyed and we only had to return with this information to the Duke, felt a little bit over-stretched. I think the story could have ended before that and this gamebook wouldn’t have suffered for it.

In any case, this is a fantastic gamebook, one of the best I’ve played in the Gamebook Adventures series. For those who love their fantasy gamebooks with a hint of horror, I cannot recomend it highly enough.

«Lords of Nurroth», by the Australian publisher Tin Man Games, written by Dylan Birtolo and wonderfully illustrated by Simon Lissaman, is the latest offering in their «Gamebook Adventures» series, set in the world of Orlandes. In it, we take the role of a thief stealing an important document for a mysterious member of one of the powerful ruling families in Nurroth.

A lot has been said about the way in which Tin Man Games try to replicate the exact same experience as the old gamebooks of the eighties. And there is a lot of reason to that statement. For instance, in every one of our choices we are told to go to «page 86» (when there is, of course, no need to number the virtual pages). We roll dice to calculate our physical capabilities, and to pass combats and obstacles, and those dice are shown rolling over the pages. In this sense, Tin Man Games’ gamebooks are always reminding us of their source inspiration.

But it would be unfair to consider these stories «clones» of the Fighting Fantasy books just because of that. There are several important differences. The setting, the world of Orlandes, is a much darker fantasy world than the Titan of Fighting Fantasy. Those were stories of high adventure, and usually – except for some interesting exceptions like «Seas of Blood» – we played the part of the «good guy» defeating an «ultimate evil». In the world of Orlandes, not everything is black or white. Our characters are not as good, the world is a world of corruption, there are no «good kings» or «wise magicians» sending us to missions. Also, I feel that the «Gamebook Adventures» series is much more coherent as a whole. Where gamebooks like «Island of the Lizard King» felt more like a collection of encounters and situations with a «final boss», the stories of Tin Man Games have a much more developed world, and the encounters and locations always make a sense in the overall story.

«Lords of Nurroth» is set in a moment of great political turmoil in the city of Nurroth. Our character is a competent thief, who gets paid by the rich to retrieve important objects from the house of their enemies. So it was a matter of time that he would get involved in some very important affairs. The document he is hired to retrieve, and the decisions he takes, can change the political landscape of Nurroth forever.

One of the things I liked most in “Lords of Nurroth” was the several different “good” endings. Usually, in Tin Man gamebooks, there’s just one way to “win” and several horrible deaths. Here, the decisions we take about the document we have to retrieve – if we give it to our first contractor, or send it to the original addressee, or even if we destroy it – will have deep consequences on the story. I detected a slight influence of “Game of Thrones”, with the background story of powerful families making alliances and plotting to take control over the city.

Apart from that, it doesn’t change the formula of Gamebook Adventures that much. It is an enjoyable gamebook, competently written and beautifully illustrated, that will not win new fans to the genre, but will surely satisfy those who want a bit more of Orlandes.

The 8th Continent, a gamebook app programmed by Ben Garrett, written by Patrick Garret and illustrated by Kate and Ben Garrett (this is one creative family!) tells the story of Morgan, a teenager who has to survive and find his family after a super-eruption destroyed the world as we know it. A post-apocalyptic adventure gamebook, that tries to make some interesting innovations in the media.

The post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of science fiction with a long history. The subgenre became popular in the eighties, with the nuclear fear of the Cold War, but we can find it as early as Mary Shelley‘s “The Last Man” in 1826. And even earlier, if we consider the Book of Revelation, or the story of the great flood and Noah’s ark in the Bible.

These stories, which usually narrate the destruction and rebirth of our world, become more popular in times of great social and political crisis. “The Last Man“, by Mary Shelley, talked about the failure of romantic political ideas. During the Great Depression in the 30s, novels like Stephen Vincent Benét‘s “By the waters of Babylon” described the ruins of the United States after a “great burning”. The Cold War brought, of course, hundreds of examples, born with the fear of global annihilation by nuclear weapons. And, after the fall of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of our current global systemic crisis, it’s no wonder that post-apocalypse becomes popular again. Usually in the form of the “zombie-apocalypse”, but also in more creative ways, like the “super-eruption” described in this story.

As we mentioned before, in this story we take the role of a teenager called Morgan, a guy who witnesses the destruction of his city one morning, and is forced to hide with his family inside a bunker. After this is narrated in the first chapter, we are told how Morgan’s family is taken away by a group of mysterious kidnappers. And, as it is mandatory in any adventure story, he decides to go looking for the kidnappers and save his family from them.

“8th Continent” tries to do some very interesting things with the gamebook media on mobile phones, by giving it more of a “game-y” feel. Placed among the narrative, there are three kinds of games, that appear whenever a specific situation arises. Whenever our character wants to search for objects, we arrive to a “Scavenging” game, basically a “match-three puzzle” kind of game. Whenever we have to force an electronic lock, it’s time for a “Hacking” game (a puzzle game similar to the old “Pipe Mania“). And even when we have to fight an adversary, we are taken to a “Fighting” game.

The result of these experiments is mixed. I think it’s interesting to try new ways to add interactivity to gamebook apps, and even to mix computer game mechanics with narrative. Still, the “scavenging” and “hacking” games, even if they are fun to play, don’t feel part of the overall story. When we are searching for medicines inside the ruins of a house, and suddenly we have to play a “candy crush” clone… well, it feels as if we were playing a different game altogether.

The “fighting” game, though, is a fantastic idea, very well executed. Instead of the random dice rolls we usually find in these kind of stories, here there is some strategy to the confrontations, in the form of a card game, where we exchange attacks and defences with our enemies, trying to eliminate them while minimising the damage we receive. Those “combat cards” are also much better interlaced with the narrative, as we obtain them when we discover weaknesses in some of our enemies, or when we use the environment to our benefit.

There is a fourth kind of game, a completely optional “decoding” game where we decrypt the entries of our father’s journal. This won’t give us any benefit in the story, but will add some interesting additional background information.

I am leaving the best part for the end. The writing of this gamebook is fantastic. It really manages to make us feel that the world being described in the story is real, the world is alive, and even the characters are believable. Here we won’t find “good” or “bad” characters, just people struggling to stay alive. Also, some of the descriptions in “8th Continent” are the most beautiful that I’ve read in any gamebook. Patrick Garrett is a very talented new writer, and I can only encourage him to keep writing. As a gamebook, it tends to be a bit more linear than many (as one of the archievements, “Completionist”, says, it is possible to read the vast majority of pages in a single playthrough), but I am sure issues like these will be fixed in future entries of this series.

I’ve liked “8th Continent” a lot. A good gamebook, not without problems, but excellently written, and a story that I will love to see continued.

Hyper Rift, a game by the small developer CKS Studio, is an interesting mix between a graphic adventure and a gamebook. In this story, we wake up with no memory of our past in the medical bay of a spaceship. During our investigation, we will discover the alien threat in the ship and its sinister past.

This game tries to do some very interesting things with the gamebook media. Even if it is a text-heavy game, the way we navigate this space ship is through a graphical map, clicking at the objects in the room we want to interact with. Also, it has a lot more puzzles than your average gamebook, giving it more of a graphical-adventure feel. Considering also that it nominally deals with two of my favourite themes – sci-fi and horror – this game has everything on the paper to be a gamebook I’d greatly enjoy. Still… it fell short of my expectations.

I must say, much to my embarassement, that I haven’t been able to finish this game. I always try to reach the end of any game I review, but even if I spent three weeks trying to break some of its hardest puzzles, I finally admitted defeat. This game is hard, which is not necessarily something bad in my book. But the more time I spent with it, the more conscious I was of its flaws.

To begin with, the story isn’t capable of maintaining the feeling of fear and menace that it aims for. The aliens are not common or dangerous enough to make you feel like you could die at any moment. Add to it the many humorous scenes and characters -so shallow they seemed just excuses to have their names on the sheet-, that may want to lighten the mood of the story every once in a while, but break immersion instead, changing the tone of the story too abruptly. The result is a game that doesn’t quite achieve that “Alien” or “Event Horizon” feel it is looking for.

Also, it has the problem of many graphical adventures; since we can move freely through the map of the space ship, and we have to use objects from one room to another, once we have discovered every place, we will still have to do a lot of backtracking; going back and forth from floor to floor, looking for that elusive object or clue that will make us move the story forward. It ends up being more frustrating than fun.

After reading all I have written so far, it may seem that I loathe this game, and I don’t want to give that impression. It is an interesting story, that tries to experiment with new mechanics, and I can only commend CKS Studio for it. Also, the background story of this ship is interesting once you get to understand what really happened. I think it just fell short of my expectations.

But I certanly would want them to try again in this direction in future products; I can see there are ideas worth exploring in this game, and a competent writer in these texts, that may only need another try to “get it right”, both as a story and as a game.

In any case, considering that this is a free game, there is not much risk in giving it a go, right?

In “Lifeline“, by 3 Minute Games, we receive a mysterious transmission from an astronaut in distress. In this game, our objective will be to guide him appropiately in order to ensure his survival in an unknown planet.

The evolution of gamebooks in mobile phones has been quite interesting. At first, appealing to the nostalgia of those who were raised with the media, they attempted to recreate the exact same experience as the physical book, with companies like Tin Man Games, who try to replicate even the dice rolls over the book pages. Later, as a result of the appearance of other companies like “Inkle“, a serious investigation on the additional narrative possibilities of this format was started, thus gamebooks like the mobile phone adaptation of the “Sorcery” saga appeared, where the story is carried out in a 3D world we can traverse freely.

Although all these new directions interest me as a player, there is something about the appearance of mobile phones and the development of gamebooks in this format that make me fear the reduction of the literary part. Text, as a mechanism for the generation of ideas, may be suffocated in the middle of 3D maps and state of the art graphics and sound. There is something very powerful about images, that make our gaze wander towards a tv screen in a restaurant and lose track of the conversation. The seduction of text is slower, it requires an effort that images don’t need, hence the charm of images is more immediate, more brutal, and can endanger the “book” part of a gamebook. Nevertheless… “Sorcery” is wonderful. The possibilities of mobile platforms open a whole new world in the narrative sphere. How to take advantage of them without distracting from the textual part?

When I saw “Lifeline“, it appeared as a feasible solution to this dilemma. In “Lifeline“, we receive a transmission from an astronaut called Taylor, cadet of the spaceship Varia, and its only survivor. From the very first moment, we can only feel sympathy for the poor guy. A young man, understandably terrified, that has found in us the only contact with humanity. As we talk with him, and help him with his more immediate problems – finding food, a place to sleep… – a believable and likeable personality is revealed, that of a young and scared young guy, who jokes in order to downplay the gravity of his situation, and strikes up a conversation when loneliness weighs him down.

“Lifeline” has a strictly textual interface. Only the speech of this astronaut, with no graphics or sound apart from the soundtrack. And every once in a while, a choice point with exactly two choices, that we will use to point him to his best options for survival. That said, it may sound as your average CYOA game, but there is a feature that changes significantly the game experience: the story proceeds in real time, during three days. We cannot “continue” whenever we want. At a given point, we may advise Taylor to go to the ruins of a spaceship, and during the next hour, Taylor cuts the communication and promises to notify us when he reaches his destination.

Later (while we continue our boring normal life, shopping or bearing our boss), a notification arrives in our mobile phone; Taylor has arrived at the new location and needs our help again.

There is something very powerful in this kind of interaction. It really gives the feeling that, on the other side of the line, there is someone who needs us, to whom we are the only link to the rest of humanity and live. We really empathize with Taylor, and feel for him when he dies. And finally, when we meet our objective and save his life, we almost regret not being able to have a beer with astronaut Taylor once the danger is over.

Definitely, a very interesting experiment, that aims to other kinds of narration with a mobile platform, impossible to replicate with a book, but keeping most of its essence. And a mistery, that of spaceship Varia and the mysterious planet, that is worth uncovering. I will want more stories like “Lifeline” in the future.